Gapless Playback, Particularly with DAPs Options

[Cosmo]

Is it correct that most portable players do not support true gapless playback of Ogg Vorbis?

[ilikedirtthe2nd]

Yes. Often the gap is even bigger than with mp3 files (At least i heard so for Samsung and iAudio).

[ranunculoid]

My iPod (rockbox firmware) plays them gaplessly.

[DreamTactix291]

The iRiver H1xx and H3xx, iAudio X5/L, and iPod with Rockbox firmware will play most all formats they support gaplessly. Otherwise, most players will not play anything back gaplessly.

[kjoonlee]

You're forgetting about CDPs..

[Cosmo]

Thanks for the info.

I have an iriver IFP-799 1G flash player. Normally I wouldn't use Vorbis because of other problems this player has with the format (bitrate restrictions, volume and quality issues). But I thought since Vorbis has native gapless support (?), I'd try to use it at least for albums that warrant gapless playback. Of course my luck was not good, as this player also outputs quite large gaps ( + clicks ) between tracks. While looking into the problem, I was surprised to read that gapless support in hardware players is rare.

Why is it so difficult for DAP mfgrs to follow Ogg Vorbis specifications?

[kjoonlee]

Because manufacturers did not care about gapless playback, and now there's too much cruft to clean up?

IIRC it only took a few days (a week at the most) for FreeMax to implement gapless Vorbis playback. (They were the first to use MCS Logic's decoder, the first hardware Vorbis decoder.) Sadly, they went out of business AFAIK.

Also, the gapless firmware was an unofficial beta, so getting your hands on one is nigh-impossible.

[rasher]

I have an iriver IFP-799 1G flash player.

You might be interested to know that a Rockbox port for the IFP-7xx is underway (790 is the model the developer is working on, but he labels the port 7xx, so I believe it might work for the 799 as well). It's mostly just one guy, but it's slowly approaching usefulness (not yet there though). Something to keep an eye on.

[pika2000]

So far, only rockbox supports gapless Vorbis. I don't see gapless vorbis support on any official/original firmware on any vorbis supporting DAPs, which questions whether they deserve to have "Vorbis/OGG support" labeling or not.

This post has been edited by pika2000: Sep 2 2006, 08:03

[HotshotGG]

So far, only rockbox supports gapless Vorbis. I don't see gapless vorbis support on any official/original firmware on any vorbis supporting DAPs, which questions whether they deserve to have "Vorbis/OGG support" labeling or not.

These companies need a swift kick in the ass. They don't care about advancing the technology as so much as they do about making a few quick bucks on adding one feature at a time.

This post has been edited by HotshotGG: Sep 2 2006, 11:55

[Cosmo]

... which questions whether they deserve to have "Vorbis/OGG support" labeling or not.

I would like to agree. Tho` unfortunately, since Ogg Vorbis is Free, I suppose one can't expect them not to only use it as it suits them.

Because manufacturers did not care about gapless playback ...

Apparently so.

I wonder how many professionals in the digital audio software and hardware businesses even recognise that gapless playback is needed. Don't the people who create the wares that make digital audio playback possible actually listen to music themselves? Does one have to be ''fanatical'' about music to appreciate how annoying it is?

This post has been edited by Cosmo: Sep 3 2006, 19:53

[molnart]

Music enthusiaist, like many people here on HA are only a negligible fragment of the consumers who buy DAPs. The mainstream is using their players listening to Britney Spears, JayZ and other kind of sh*t.

I remember 1 or 2 years ago, when portable players were not so widespread here, i asked on of my friends if his DAP had gapless playback. He'd no idea what i'm talking about, while - knowing his musical taste - he surely listened to music where gapless playback is needed.

I believe that most of the people have no idea what gapless playback is, because they were grown up on players like WMP, iTunes and (early) Winamp.

[pepoluan]

Whatever happened to "We'll make better things that are usable, even if the public has not demanded it yet" mentality?

I think it all boils down to the humongously difficult maintenance of software nowadays... the sins of which comes from the root cause of not doing proper software design and development...

... and from my personal POV, the use of C/C++, heh

[cabbagerat]

Whatever happened to "We'll make better things that are usable, even if the public has not demanded it yet" mentality?

People weren't willing to pay for it. Embedded devices (like DAPs) these days are built and designed extremely cheaply - companies know that knocking a couple of cents will have a big effect on their margin. Apple are in a good position, because people are willing to spend extra money just to get an iPod, so they can do good development and add features without shaving cents off a tiny profit margin.

... and from my personal POV, the use of C/C++, heh

I don't know why people are so bent on hating C++. Most of the arguments against it either stem from ignorance of the language's philosophy and features or poor design (or both).

[mmortal03]

Don't forget about the Rio Karma. It played Ogg Vorbis gaplessly as well. Sadly, Rio is no more.

[ilikedirtthe2nd]

Don't forget about the Rio Karma. It played Ogg Vorbis gaplessly as well. Sadly, Rio is no more.

Rio is no more, but their property and development team have been bought by Sigmatel. They sell the ST3600 SOC (system on chip) which ships with a SDK that enables 3rd party manufactors to have all the Karma features at hand - like Vorbis, Flac, gapless playback etc.

Trekstor is going to release a new micro-hdd player, the "Vibez" soon wich features the ST3600 and seems to sport all the nice Karma features plus colour tft, replaceable battery and UMS capability.

This post has been edited by ilikedirtthe2nd: Sep 4 2006, 15:59

[pepoluan]

Whatever happened to "We'll make better things that are usable, even if the public has not demanded it yet" mentality?

People weren't willing to pay for it. Embedded devices (like DAPs) these days are built and designed extremely cheaply - companies know that knocking a couple of cents will have a big effect on their margin. Apple are in a good position, because people are willing to spend extra money just to get an iPod, so they can do good development and add features without shaving cents off a tiny profit margin.

If they already implemented good software design methodology since the start, the software will already be bug free so at this point they can create new features instead of busily debugging. And like you said, Apple can put a markup on their iPods... so why not build in a gapless feature?

... and from my personal POV, the use of C/C++, heh

I don't know why people are so bent on hating C++. Most of the arguments against it either stem from ignorance of the language's philosophy and features or poor design (or both).

C/C++ is very powerful & flexible, that I don't doubt. But along with its flexibility, it is also very hard to debug. It used to be that errors such as typecast errors are caught at compile time, thus when a binary is produced, it is at least half-debugged.

With today's CPU performance spilling out of one's mouth and nose, the trend is toward optimizing compilers. C/C++'s compilers also perform optimization, although due to 'smart' programmers finding 'ways' to make their programs perform 'better', the compilers have a royal difficult time to produce the most-optimized programs.

But... with the advent of optimizing compilers for non-C/C++ languages, one advantage of C/C++, which is its performance, is no longer as significant as before. So why not switch over to an easier-to-debug language now? Why stick with C/C++?

Heh, sorry for the rant. Just explaining my POV. I *can* and *did* make programs with C/C++, but I found it was an experience I'd rather not repeat in this lifetime

[kwanbis]

EDIT: sorry, bad post.

From apples announcement:

iPod is getting enhanced today. 60% brighter with brighness control, 3.5 hours video playback (up from 2 hrs... big version goes to 6.5 hours), new headphones, gapless playback. (probably for AAC)

This post has been edited by kwanbis: Sep 12 2006, 18:13

[goodnews]

EDIT: sorry, bad post.

From apples announcement:

iPod is getting enhanced today. 60% brighter with brighness control, 3.5 hours video playback (up from 2 hrs... big version goes to 6.5 hours), new headphones, gapless playback. (probably for AAC)

See the new post on Apple's new GAPLESS Playback I just started at:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=48231

[Rivers1080p]

I have an iriver IFP-799 1G flash player. Normally I wouldn't use Vorbis because of other problems this player has with the format (bitrate restrictions, volume and quality issues). But I thought since Vorbis has native gapless support (?), I'd try to use it at least for albums that warrant gapless playback. Of course my luck was not good, as this player also outputs quite large gaps ( + clicks ) between tracks.

Also have a 799 and never heard clicks between ogg tracks.

I also ditched the Ogg format (sadly) because of the bitrate restriction / volume thing.
MP3 in VBR 5 or 6 sounds pretty good (and a lot better compared to similar size CBR MP3-files) and almost anything plays MP3's. Not so with Ogg


Are gaps between songs a system thing or a file thing?
If I convert a Pink Floyd album (no silence between tracks) to MP3. Then I make a standard CD from those MP3's. Will there be gaps?

On MP3 players I'm guessing it occurs because the player doesn't retrieve the next track until the current track is finished. Is this right?

[DreamTactix291]

I have an iriver IFP-799 1G flash player. Normally I wouldn't use Vorbis because of other problems this player has with the format (bitrate restrictions, volume and quality issues). But I thought since Vorbis has native gapless support (?), I'd try to use it at least for albums that warrant gapless playback. Of course my luck was not good, as this player also outputs quite large gaps ( + clicks ) between tracks.

Are gaps between songs a system thing or a file thing?
If I convert a Pink Floyd album (no silence between tracks) to MP3. Then I make a standard CD from those MP3's. Will there be gaps?

On MP3 players I'm guessing it occurs because the player doesn't retrieve the next track until the current track is finished. Is this right?

It's both based on the file itself and the software used to decode it. MP3 itself isn't gapless due to being a frame based codec. LAME when encoding files adds data into its LAME tag that tells an aware decoder how many samples to skip to achieve gapless playback. In turn the decoder itself must be aware of these tags and also be able to buffer ahead into the next file so it can achieve true seamlessness.

Vorbis does something similar however it is built into the codec specifications so theoretically most if not all Vorbis files should be gapless.